[wegs]

> Next to it is a picture of a CodexDNA BioXP device that is advertised as producing “custom DNA fragments of up to 7,000 base pairs”. Could this be the next distributed manufacturing revolution? This time with DNA printers making COVID-19 vaccines in our garages instead of 3D printers and plastic widgets?

> I’ll start with the bad news: Nobody will be making an mRNA vaccine in their garage any time soon.

... We're not there in time for COVID19, but technologically, I think we're less far away than this article presumes. Cost of both sequencing and synthesis has been dropping like a rock, albeit not very smoothly. I can get DNA synthesized for less than what I was paying for amateur PCBs as an undergrad.

A lot of the other complexity, I suspect, is specific to getting this out in <1 year. It's worth remembering the earliest vaccines took no technology beyond what I have in my garage. With a little more time and patience, I'm sure some of the other complexity will go down. We can't spare time and patience when we're bleeding billions of dollars from our economy and thousands of lives each day, but....

[yosito]

> Nobody will be making an mRNA vaccine in their garage any time soon.

There was actually a video on YouTube a few months ago about some biohackers, Josiah Zayner and others, who made a DNA COVID vaccine in their garages, and it actually worked. Granted it wasn't mRNA, but very similar.